Some Kind of Ending

Well it's my last morning in Yogya. In about 90 minutes I will be leaving my kos for a flight to Jakarta and in 4 days I start work.

12 Hours Ago I finished a party with my kos family and the girls and they gave me a bunch of presents and all wrote really beautiful messages for me in a book. I had to give a speech which no doubt made absolutely no sense, but they all nodded and smiled so i guess they got the gist.

9 Hours ago I got home from final drinks at Bar Bintang with the crew who are still in Yogya (a lot of people have gone to Bali). Because the staff there know my name (shame on me) and I often joke about with them, they put on my favourite Bintang music namely Abbey Road by The Beatles and then my other favourite Bintang music 311! None of the heathens (!) I was with understood the magic of The Beatles so I pondered the longevity of that album while stirring sugar into my Lemon Tea. Yes that's right no beer for me. I start working on Monday gituloh!

15 Hours Ago I got home from the airport to say goodbye to Ben, who, in the next chapter of his ongoing story of impossible bad luck, broke his hand on Tuesday and was told by one of the Aussie doctors to "just go home mate" because of the seriousness of the break (on his right & writing hand) and the high risk of infection here.

36 Hours ago I had a hot shower at the Hyatt in one of the rooms of the AusAID staff- a theatre nurse whom I had never before met and who gave me use of her room for one hour while she had her final briefing-we then got taken out to dinner to thank us for our work. We are also getting some kind of letter acknowledging our contribution to the relief work, which will be on Federal Government letterhead and will no doubt be quite useful in the future.

So thats my last day and a half in Yogya. Too many goodbyes. And although I suppose it should get easier as I get older to say goodbye to people, I find terrifying the thought that some of the most interesting, intelligent and kind-hearted people that I now call my friends, by virtue of the situation in which we met, I will probably rarely see again.

Yogya has changed in the last 2 weeks btw. Which isn't surprising I suppose. But where before I could walk the length of Jalan Kaliurang and not see another single foreigner except maybe the odd Australian, now I see one every 50 metres. There are also so many SUV's on the road now it is staggering, each with a little white sign in the window identifying it as the vehicle of a particular NGO. There are 65 NGO's in Yogya, all working hard, all distributing aid and providing medical care and logistical assistance, many creating dependencies and tensions within local communities which will be very hard to dissolve when the NGO's pack up and go home.
The dilemma for all time- how to do it all properly. And from 2 conversations I have had with different people since Sunday, the United Nations really has no idea either.

Ok, so I am off to J-Town to find if the streets are paved with gold and see whether people actually do wear 3 piece suits in 32 degree 97 percent humidity. And Dad, I don't really know anyone in Jakarta so I am going to have to find a bar or something to watch the game in, either that or watch it in my new kos........... Iii-aaa.